Photo courtesy of Masaji Inoshita
Japanese-American internees file out of a train in 1942 for processing before being sent to internment camps.
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Photo courtesy of Masaji Inoshita Japanese-American internees file out of a train in 1942 for processing before being sent to internment camps. |
By Karen Yamada
Masaji Inoshita looked over the deserted desert. It is a place he used to call home. He has hiked to the top of this particular butte 25 miles southwest of Tempe many times. Its steep terrain is slippery with rock shards. Its dark outcroppings can hide rattlesnakes.
"Ouch!" he said, cutting his finger as he bent down to pick up a broken beer bottle.
The pain of a cut wouldn't stop Inoshita. The 78-year-old man already had driven 50 miles from his Glendale home to visit what is left of the Gila River Detainment Center near Sacaton. The center, located on the Gila River Indian Community, served as a concentration camp during World War II for more than 16,000 Japanese-Americans.
Inoshita visits several times a month. He comes to clean the area and to keep it tidy. Broken bits of glass and bottles are everywhere. Garbage bags, rakes, shovels, paint and rollers overflow the trunk of his car.
Sometimes when he visits, he finds graffiti painted on the white structure that was built by the internees more than 50 years ago to honor those who had enlisted in the military. A stone memorial stands nearby in remembrance of the GIs who never came back.
Now coyotes largely inhabit the land. Faint outlines of once-traveled roads are still visible. Remnants of red shingles appear seared into the dirt. Barbed wire lies coiled, forgotten.
Life for Inoshita began here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942. Within two months of the signing, Inoshita and his traditional Japanese family were forced to leave their farm in California for the parched Arizona desert.
With Japan's assault on Pearl Harbor two months earlier, fears about possible attacks on the West Coast were growing. Newspapers dramatized news from the front. Various organizations in California, such as the American Legion and the Associated Farmers, demanded action. They wanted Japanese-looking people removed from the coastal areas.
Inoshita, who was born in California and was an American citizen, recalled what happened to his family soon after Roosevelt signed the order. He remembered the FBI knocking on the door.
"They came to the house to pick up my father," he said. "We were eating breakfast. They put the handcuffs on him in front of all the family and took him away. He didn't say nothing. What could he say?
"His name was on every donation list around. Making $5 and $10 donations to every Japanese type of organization around. My father's on this list, he's on that list, he's on another list."
No charges were ever brought against his father.
Nevertheless, the man was forcibly interned in Bismarck, N.D., for many months, unable to communicate with his family in California.
Inoshita, as the eldest son, became head of the family. It was traditional for Japanese parents to expect their oldest son or daughter to eventually take on the role. It was a role his family had prepared him for since birth.
"From the earliest days I can remember my parents telling me, 'You're the citizen,'" he said. "'You're going to be the head of the farming operation. You're the one who is going to be legal first, and we're going to depend on you to take care of the family operation.' I grew up with this. 'Here in America you got rights.' This was the impression that they made on us, that we had to be careful, that we had to not sully our citizenship."
With his father gone, the responsibility for the family of 10 fell squarely upon his shoulders. Inoshita was 22 years old. His life up to that point had been filled with school, farm work and occasional parties.
Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, commanding general of the Western Defense Command, designated restricted zones in California, Oregon, Washington and the southern third of Arizona as military areas. All people of Japanese ancestry within the zones would have to move.
DeWitt's military boundary in Arizona ran from the California border east through Wickenberg and Peoria. It passed through Phoenix along Grand Avenue and Van Buren Street, and stretched through Tempe along Mill Avenue and then along Apache Boulevard and into central Mesa. From Mesa it continued to Florence Junction, Globe and Safford, finally ending on the border with New Mexico.
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Photo illustration/original photos courtesy of Masaji Inoshita Masaji Inoshita was in his 20s and living in an Arizona internment camp when he joined the Army to fight the Japanese. The sign behind him was superimposed for the story. It is an exclusion order posted in San Francisco in 1942 telling Japanese-Americans what they need to do to be interned. |
The Army built 10 detainment centers inland and eastward from the coast. Two centers were built in Arizona. The one Inoshita would be sent to, on the Gila River Indian reservation, housed two separate camps, Canal and Butte.
The other detainment center was at Poston, on the Colorado River Indian Community near Parker. At their peak, the centers held 31,000 people and were the third and fourth largest cities in Arizona.
The mass detainment of more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans had no precedent in U.S. history. Two-thirds were American citizens by birthright. Seventy percent had never seen Japan. The rest, primarily Issei (elder ones), were considered resident aliens and were exempted by U.S. law from becoming citizens or owning land.
"We'd been hearing stories about L.A. being evacuated," Inoshita said. "We'd heard stories about San Francisco, Bainbridge Island. And we said, 'Hey, are they going to come to us?' On Feb. 19, when they drew the line, we knew we were going to be called. We got notice on April 1. By the 16th we were moved."
The internees were told they could take to camp only what they could carry. Inoshita documented the list of possessions his family had accumulated in the more than 20 years they had lived in the United States. He registered the family name with the Wartime Civilian Control Authority. Neighbors approached asking what he was going to sell. Everything that was not sold was either squeezed into a neighbor's barn or left behind.
"You had to register what you were going to leave behind," Inoshita said. "I listed all the crops we had raised, how much we had spent on them. I had to get rid of the livestock. We had 16 horses. Fifty dollars apiece. My father had paid $400 a team and we sold them for $50 apiece. My father loved those horses. And we got a family number - 14279.
"My mom was a real pillar. When it was determined that we were going to go to camp, she burned all of our clothes. All the clothes we had worn up to that time. We went to the J.C. Penney Co. and outfitted the entire clan from shoes to the top of their head. Completely. We were going to camp with all new clothes. We weren't going to be ashamed of ourselves. Hey, do with us what you will, you know, but we weren't going looking like no paupers."
Construction at the camps had begun. Arlene Johns, a Pima Indian born and reared on the Gila River reservation, remembered what she saw as a 5-year-old child.
"The desert was very peaceful before that," she said. "It was quiet, no lights. Open. And the tamarisks were only as high as my horse. It was hot, hot, hot. And no shade. And pretty soon there was this beacon light at night. Out on Estrella and South Mountain. Later on we used to hear these planes come by. And then I saw all these trucks bringing lumber and whatever they were bringing. It was just a constant rumble."
Inoshita said: "Butte Camp was just a bunch of empty barracks when we got there. I was in Section 54 and they gave us 54 6-A and 6-B. Since we had no furnishings, it was a big old place for us.
"Just had rafters up top. No ceilings. Flooring was plank and built off the ground. Depending upon the elevation, some places only 6 to 8 inches off the ground. Other places were almost 2 feet off the ground. They were made out of green planking so when they dried up there would be maybe a half-inch gap between the planks. When the wind picked up, that dust came all through the building."
The physical design of the camps was similar to those of the other detainment centers. Housing was arranged in blocks. Each contained 14 barracks, and there was a mess hall and a recreation hall on the outer edges.
Men's and women's lavatories, ironing and laundry facilities were in the interior spaces of the blocks. Households were assigned space in the 100- by 20-foot family structures of wood and tarpaper according to the number of people in a household. Other structures for schools, administration and warehouses were scattered in surrounding areas away from the neighborhood blocks.
"There was no heat at first," Inoshita said. "But eventually, oil-burning stoves were put in each place. The big problem was nighttime going to the bathroom. One hundred fifty feet is a long ways in the middle of the night and it's close to freezing."
Families did not have much money, but what they did have they used to purchase goods by catalog, Inoshita said. By day, they used the single light bulb socket for the sewing machine to make drapes and coverlets for the beds. They built small herb gardens. They built fishponds, stocking them with fish from a nearby canal. They did anything they could to make their barracks a home.
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Photo courtesy of Arizona Historical Foundation
Panorama of the Gila River Detainment Center in the 1940s. In the distance, beyond South Mountain, was Phoenix. |
Life was similar at the Poston Detainment Center. ASU special education professor John Nelson, 61, remembered what it was like. At that time, he was 6 years old. His father, who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was the assistant director for Camp One, the largest in Poston.
"I was the only Anglo kid in school," Nelson said. "Everyone else was Japanese. And we played together all the time. Friday evenings we had movies, shown on the water tower. They showed war movies. So we all played war together. Little boys running around doing their stuff.
"The people tried to make do with what they had. They tried to make it more beautiful, with their fishponds and gardens, and with their decorations of each of the barracks. I remember one that had beautifully carved redwood above the door. They were quite individual and very different from one place to another."
As more and more Japanese-American internees were moved into the camps, societal order became increasingly important. Administratively, each block had a manager who was selected by the War Relocation Authority.
The managers were liaisons between the camp administration and the internees. Their duties included informing block residents about new administrative regulations and policies, keeping the census and distributing mail and supplies. Block councils were formed to play the role of peacemakers when conflicts arose.
"There would always be meetings, two or three nights a week," Nelson said. "All the block chiefs or the elected people or the chief of the fire department would come. And they'd all be in our living room. Sometimes it would be outside. And they'd be coming there to talk about things all the time. And my mother told me these were real good things to have happening. That it was important what they were doing and what my dad was doing there."
The War Relocation Authority hired Japanese-Americans for nearly all jobs available at the center. Most center residents had family members who worked for the WRA in one job capacity or another.
Inoshita and the family's eldest daughter were the only two from the family to work at Butte Camp.
"She worked in the mess hall," Inoshita said. "And I worked in the mess hall. I was about a third- or fourth-level cook at Butte. I was the rice cooker. It was a pretty tricky job because it involved those 15-gallon Army pots. I was paid $16 a month. Later on I also went to pick cotton, which paid me $3 a day."
Several of the neighboring Pimas made friends with the internees. Their mud hut homes on the reservation were a far cry from the luxurious barracks that had been constructed for the internees. Some lived in plain lean-tos made of bushes tied together. There was no electricity or toilets.
Johns said her family lived right on the border of the camp. Her father would trade chickens for anything the internees had.
"Rice, especially," she said.
"I would go riding on my horse. I would go up to the camp, but I couldn't get in so the kids that were there, whoever was there, would come up and look at me. They would be saying things to me but I didn't speak English. They would put their hands through the barbed wire, and I would touch them.
"Sometimes a few men and women would come and we would take them down to the store. We would drink soda pop and eat ice cream and go home on the wagon. And I would think my grandfolks would get into trouble for that. But they didn't."
After a few months in camp, Inoshita got restless. His brothers and sisters were busy in school. He wasn't going anywhere holed up in the camp.
Still, he was expected to keep the family together. Traditionally, the needs of the family should come first.
Then he made a decision that would change the relationship he had with his family forever. He volunteered for the service. He volunteered to fight Japan.
"I was supposed to be head of the family, but I figured they were safe now, because they were in camp," Inoshita said quietly. "It was not a hard decision. I figured, first, personal freedom. Second, I'm going to work for the family someone in our family to have a good reputation as an American solider. Third, for the Nikkei (the Japanese-American society). None of us were volunteering up to that point. If there was ever going to be a prisoner's exchange, we could all be exchanged because it appeared we were not loyal enough to serve. Fourth, for my country and because I was born in America. Japan was not my country.
"I knew that my mother would oppose my volunteering because I'm the head of the family. I knew she would expect me to re-establish the family when we got out. So I didn't tell her. I just left her a note at 3 a.m. And I just left. She didn't even know I was gone until the next day."
Inoshita did not anticipate the effect his decision would have on the family. He also did not anticipate the enormous guilt and soul-searching that would haunt him to this day.
"I had a younger brother, about two years younger, who was healthy and strong, but he was deaf," Inoshita said. "The fact that I volunteered to fight against Japan became public knowledge after I left. The whole Inoshita clan became pariahs in camp. The Japanese people knew that I went into the military intelligence language service to work against Japan. I don't think they would have minded if I had gone to fight in France or whatever.
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Photo by Karen Yamada
Masaji Inoshita, 78, drives 50 miles from his Glendale home often to visit what's left of the Gila River Detainment Center near Sacaton. |
"But to fight against Japan made the whole family pariahs. Nobody would eat with them. Nobody would associate with them. And my sister tells me to this day, 'You did us no favors, Mas, when you volunteered. You hurt us real bad.'
"And my brother became more disassociated with everything and his life became so screwed up that they sent him to a California mental institution, where he died several years later. And I feel that I'm responsible a great deal for his problems. If I was there to protect him, to guide him, which I always did, he would not have suffered that."
Inoshita served for 3 1/2 years interrogating Japanese prisoners of war in Burma. After the war, he returned to Arizona to re-establish the family, but others had assumed his role as head of household. He was misplaced. He wandered.
"I found that my responsibilities had been taken over by my sister who was of age," he said. "And my younger brothers, 15, 16, 17, they had taken over the whole thing. They had started a farm. They had started the operation. They did contract work for Caucasians raising cotton. By now my father was close to 70 years old. And I looked at the situation and I said, 'Hey Mas, you are no longer the head of the family. You better stay away and establish your own life.'"
He became a fruit tramp. He worked in Phoenix packing celery, cutting lettuce and picking cantaloupes. After that was done, he went to California where he picked oranges and olives. He cut grapes. He went from job to job until his parents, concerned about his welfare, arranged a marriage.
It was common for Japanese families to find matches for their sons from among neighboring families with good backgrounds. Although his future wife had also been interned in the Gila River camp, Inoshita had not known her.
Shikata ga nai is a Japanese phrase meaning to make do, to make the best of the situation, Inoshita said. It is a typical reaction of Japanese-Americans toward situations that cannot be helped. It fuels their desire to adjust, to make a happier future.
"I adjusted, I adjusted," he said. "Adjustment was the big thing all my life."
He never regained his stature as head of the family. Today, he characterizes his family situation as "not close."
"Most of my sisters and brothers don't get along with me, I think," Inoshita said. "The one next to me, he and I are fairly close. The next one, he's entirely 'anti-Mas.' Anything I say or do, he will oppose. My youngest brother, he's kind of ambivalent. I know that he's always on guard. My sister in California likes me because I'm the oldest. But the other two sisters don't like me. They think I'm a showoff."
He said his father and mother never blamed him openly for what happened.
"When my father died, he left whatever savings he had to all the boys, and not to any of the girls," Inoshita said. "And the girls had a tough time dealing with that. That was a fairly traditional thing. Normally they would give it to the oldest boy. I received some. I was surprised that I got anything."
Today, Inoshita is a frequent public speaker at local high schools, junior colleges and veteran organizations. He has appeared on television to talk about the internment and to tell his story.
He said his children don't care to know about his past.
"Most of the Japanese community don't want to talk about it," he added. "They don't want to be involved. Sometimes when I tell my stories I see them nodding their heads no or yes I mean they recall the story. But they never say they are in agreement. They never say they're in opposition, either. Even though they're very proud and did proud things when they were there, they still feel ashamed. Because, after all, you were a downgraded citizen."
Inoshita closed the trunk of his car. It was full of trash bags filled with garbage.
He will come again to clean the site. He will continue his public service.
"When I first came back to Phoenix, I didn't go to the camp for the longest time," he said. "There was some kind of a feeling, you know, I didn't want to see it. But gradually it kind of built up in me to where I said, 'Hey, Mas, that's part of your life, you'd better go check it out.' And I went there. And you know, I sat at that butte, and I think I cried the whole time. Just cried. I used to go up there and just sit there by myself. But it was good therapy. I could see that it was good therapy. So I kept going back.
"I have fine recollections and no resentments. All it was, was a big adventure in life. And each obstacle I faced I tried to correct in my own way tried to find solutions. After the war, I tried to find a cure. Actually, I didn't realize that I was in so bad a shape until I went there and started my own therapy of going there and getting involved. I guess in some ways I was so bitter that I needed the story, yet at the same time it was through the therapy that I can now say that I'm fairly cured, although there's some sadness. There's some sadness."
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Photo by Karen Yamada Only one gravestone remains at Canal Camp near Sacaton. This one is for a dog that died in 1945. |
